The Ultimate Science Book List

Inspired by recent discussions, I thought it would be cool to start a ScienceBlog thread in which you list science-relevant books that you’ve read recently.

This should not compete with www.scienceshelf.com, Fred’s stomping grounds, which already has a great list (which you should visit right now.) This is more a public-domain thing, more to see what the public is reading. More importantly, it gives the scientifically-literate people something to read other then journals (as much fun as they are).

Rules:

1. No textbooks. I don’t care how good your O-Chem book is.
2. Very limited fiction. Authors like Michael Crichton, Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child, Dean Koontz, John Case, Richard Preston and even the late, great Arthur C. Clarke are all fun to read, but the science isn’t always correct. If you post something made-up, you have to justify it.
3. You have to have read the book. Not the back cover.
4. This is the ULTIMATE book list. Books that were OK are not good enough.
5. Very short reviews. This is not your try-out for Reader’s Digest, but don’t copy and paste the publisher’s review either.
6. For the sake of space and list-length, we’ll restrict the list to books for adults. To clarify, a book for adults can have illustrations.
7. If you wrote it yourself, you can’t put it up. It all has to be second-hand. No cheating.

The person who reads the most books wins the Grand Prize of knowing more stuff.

Go!


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18 thoughts on “The Ultimate Science Book List”

  1. “Order out of Chaos” – Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers.
    This book is about the philosophical consequences of the thermodynamics of systems that are far out of equilibrium (such as: living creatures :-) )
    It’s a quite thorough book that preceded the later, more fashionable “chaos” books.

  2. On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

    This book will change the way you look at your brain, memory, and computers. Please give this a try it is amazing!

  3. I would recommend Chaos by James Gleick
    Wonderful Life by the late great Stephen Jay Gould and
    King Solomon’s Ring by Conrad Lorenz
    BTW can anyone help with a query? I’m looking for a science book I used to own but never got round to reading. Can’t remember the author but it was about atoms and contained ‘photos’ of atoms.

  5. Kurzweil, Ray (2006) The Singularity is Near.

    Controversial, yes, but if even a small percentage of his predictions are accurate, this may be the most important book written to date.

  6. If you find A Brief History of Time rough going, try Hawking’s newer and more readable The Universe in a Nutshell.

    My review begins with a limerick, and then continues,

    In the foreword to The Universe in a Nutshell, Stephen Hawking admits that the success of A Brief History of Time “was remarkable for a book that was not easy going.”That is an understatement. Despite critical acclaim for the accesibility of its writing, the complexity and counter-intuitiveness of its subject matter probably made Professor Hawking’s earlier book one of the least read best-sellers in history.He resisted requests to write a follow-up, he states, because he didn’t want to write a sequel. Fortunately for those who are ready to grapple again with the curvature of space-time, the uncertainty principle, a quantum theory of gravity, evaporating black holes, and multidimensional string theory (sometimes referred to as the theory of everything), the professor who holds the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics once occupied by Sir Isaac Newton “[came] to realize that there is room for a different kind of book that might be easier to understand.”

    Fred Bortz — Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

  7. A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking
    Published in 1988, I just flipped through it to see if it’s too dated, but he ends with a discussion of string theory and I think this one should count as a classic.

    The Language of the Genes – Steve Jones
    Published in 1993, way before the human genome was sort of fully mapped, Jones communicates the science through a beautifully written account of the ways in which the evolution and shuffling of genes have shaped human lives.

    I would second the nomination of Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything – well-known for writing travel books, he took 3 years to research this entertaining and pretty accurate overview of scientific knowledge.

    Please visit my new blogsite where I’ve started to review books like:

    Oxygen: the molecule that made the world – Nick Lane
    which tells a brilliantly convincing story of how protection from oxygen free radicals and aerobic metabolism might have evolved in early life forms before photosynthesis itself.

    – iid noise
    http://www.bloglikelihood.blogspot.com

  8. The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin. A very readable and enjoyable overview of the history of science. Especially good for non-scientists.

    Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin. I think this is an especially good biography of a person who applied scientific thinking to many areas of life.

  9. The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature – Matt Ridley
    Why are women sexy? And why do they sometimes want badboys and other times want the good guy?

    The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature – Geoffrey Miller
    A similar read to the Red Queen, but with a better treatment of why we have art and beauty.

    The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature – Steven Pinker
    Why the blank slate hypothesis fails miserably. And why this should not concern us.

    Andy
    http://www.pulltheskydown.com

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